Fountaindale Public Library

Our unfinished march, the violent past and imperiled future of the vote-- a history, a crisis, a plan, Eric Holder with Sam Koppelman

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 227-269) and index

index present

non fiction

Our unfinished march

bibliography

1312918124

Eric Holder with Sam Koppelman

the violent past and imperiled future of the vote-- a history, a crisis, a plan

Voting is our most important right as Americans -- "the basic right without which all others are meaningless," as Lyndon Johnson famously said when he signed the Voting Rights Act -- but it's also the one most violently contested throughout U.S. history. Since the gutting of the act in the landmark Shelby County v. Holder case in 2013, many states have passed laws restricting the vote. In the wake of the 2020 election, President Trump's effort to overturn the vote has evolved into a slow-motion coup, with many Republicans launching an all-out assault on our democracy. The vote seems to be in unprecedented peril. But the peril is not at all unprecedented. America is a fragile democracy, Eric Holder argues, whose citizens have only had unfettered access to the ballot since the 1960s. He takes readers through three dramatic stories of how the vote was won: first by white men, through violence and insurrection; then by white women, through protests and mass imprisonments; and finally by African Americans, in the face of lynching and terrorism. Next, he dives into how the vote has been stripped away by Shelby -- a case in which Holder was one of the parties. He ends with visionary chapters on how we can reverse this tide of voter suppression and become a true democracy where every voice is heard and every vote is counted

adult